I Bleed
by Mhemnarch
Summary: Alternate 2nd half to Season 3. Buffy suffers from magic visions as Ethan Rayne forms an army of vampires; meanwhile the Watchers plot. Please read & review!
1. Chapter 1: Graveyard Shift

[Note: This story takes place after Season 3, Episode 10 ("Amends")—that is, early January 1999.]

By now the graveyard was something like a set piece to her, its tombstones set like slabs of cardboard and its thin trees still and seeming to evade even the small changes the seasons brought. In this particular spot, in this particular graveyard (there were several in the city), at this particular time of night she would "patrol." She wouldn't spend all her time there, of course—there were other locations to monitor—but this spot had become her favorite. She would wait for sunrise there and sometimes even bring a light and try vainly to finish homework. On occasion a friend would meet her there and they would have conversations—those conversations briefly interrupted as she dispatched newly risen vampires.

She had trouble imagining that there were people at the graveyard during the daytime, paying their respects and weeping. She, of course, had learned to weep in safety: among the tombstones was no place for the vulnerability of tears. And at night there were few mourners, although recently she had been seeing one man, whom she placed in his mid-thirties, return to one site, a slight distance to her left, night after night. He never seemed to notice her, and he was never around when there was danger. A recluse, perhaps. She wasn't one to judge a recluse.

She saw a silhouette move, and for a second she thought a vampire had risen without her noticing. Seeing it, however, she realized its movements were far too natural to belong to the newly undead. She sat still on the grass and observed.

The silhouette moved away: her trained eyes still saw its movements only dimly. It stood still for a few moments, walked in one direction and then another, skipped, balanced itself on a tombstone. Disrespectful and erratic, but not threatening: she allowed it to continue.

It began walking towards her, and she got a good look at its face: a human, definitely, and though as tall as she was, very young. An overgrown boy, his face mischievous. As he approached her his smile slowly faded; once he reached her he sat beside her on the ground.

"Are you lost?" Buffy said.

The boy said nothing. He sat on the ground, his eyes wide open and his mouth blank. He couldn't have been older than twelve.

"Is something wrong?" she said. "What are you doing out this late at night?"

No sound but the wind moving the chilled grass. Buffy stood up and walked up to the boy. He could be a ghost, she thought. Or a demon. Or a harmless boy lost in a dangerous graveyard. She reached out and touched him. He was corporeal.

"Listen, I'd like to help you. Is there anything you can say? Maybe you could show me, if you can't talk. Make hand motions."

She let the silence stretch to minutes as she waited for him to reply.

She kneeled in front of him, looking into his eyes. The pupils did not move; he looked straight forward and did not vary his gaze. He did blink when her hand neared his face, however.

She rested her hand on his neck for a few seconds. Yes, there was certainly a pulse: healthy, at a normal rate. She pulled her hand back, stood up, and looked around the graveyard. The man who was often at the graveyard wasn't there, but she hadn't expected him to be. And Faith was likewise absent—count on her to miss patrol on the one night something strange happened.

Buffy looked at the little boy again and gasped slightly. Though he had not moved, there was now a scratch, very visible although only slightly bleeding, just where she had touched him to see if he was real—the side of his neck, an inch from his jaw. The cut seemed to deepen before her eyes—by the time she reached her hand to it to stop the flow of blood it was tricking too fast to be stopped.

Sharp breath in as she touched his arm. Lie down. If he reclined, would the flow slow? Why hadn't she listened to Giles more carefully? His lectures on bleeding, medical care.

There was too much: red on her hands, the grass, her shirt sleeves (now ruined; she couldn't get all this out), the child's neck. His eyes were still open. Even with both hands she couldn't bind the cut. She thought his whole head would fall off.

His eyes were still open. Had she seen him before? How much blood could he lose before losing consciousness? Before death? She tore strips from her shirt, tried to bind the cut. She wasn't doing this right: the knots weren't staying together. She couldn't do anything.

The blood was a literal puddle by now. How much blood was in a person? 5 liters? He was still a child, he would have less. There had to be at least 2 liters on the grass right now; she could feel it seeping through the knees of her jeans. What had he been doing? Was he sent for her? Why had he gone right to her spot?

His eyes squinted slightly now, and his lips, before locked in a straight line, now hung open slightly. He seemed paler. Was he really paler? Maybe it was her imagination. By now she had torn her entire shirt off, tried to wrap the whole thing around his neck as an oversized bandage, tourniquet. If anyone saw they might think she was strangling him. He didn't breathe, but the blood kept streaming. Nothing she did helped anything. She was no doctor, but she knew blood. Blood didn't come out like this, not from a cut in the side of the neck. Before it hadn't looked like the cut even reached the jugular.

For a second after she noticed the wet feeling on her cheeks she thought the blood had gotten there as well—as it had, most likely, since God knows it had gotten everywhere else. On her cheeks, however, were tears, not blood; she realized this when the salt began to sting. At last the blood was stopping, and it seemed there had been more of it than any child, even such a large child, could contain.

No. If the blood was stopping… Was there a pulse? A pumping to the blood coating every surface? No, now there was no blood at all. It stopped as quickly as it started. No life in those eyes. No sound. Had he made a sound when he was bleeding? She couldn't remember hearing even a gasp.

And now what was she left with? Stripped to her undershirt, covered in blood, her fingerprints no doubt smeared in blood over everything. She didn't want to go home, but she wanted to go see Giles and have him recite the litany: of how there was nothing she could have done, of how sometimes things were out of her control, of how everything would be alright and life would continue. She was quivering, and she couldn't tell whether this was from the cold or from the sheer force of the trauma. She had seen blood; she had seen dead children; she had thought she had seen the worst of everything.

Her torn shirt soaked up much of the blood and cleaned off anything resembling fingerprints in the area. That at least she could be thankful for. She would leave the body for the police to find, ask one of the Scoobies to make a 911 call. All of her clothes were stained with blood, and though she couldn't see a mirror she suspected that she right now resembled some picture from a domestic abuse awareness campaign. Blood, everywhere blood.


	2. Chapter 2: Messages, Bottles

Buffy should never have told Faith about Willy's Bar. Not that she could have known how Faith would act about it: who would've thought the place would attract her so much? Who would've thought a slayer would start slumming around near vamps and demons, relishing the attention, becoming an expert on the ways the different beasts would act when she was around? She got to know the sideways glance they would make, turning away if she returned the look; and she liked it, because it was like the way men looked at her when they had the hots for her but didn't want to show it. Couldn't take their eyes off her. She caught herself dressing sluttier, just for the reaction, as if they would have a reaction.

Buffy didn't know she was there, most of the time, but if she had said anything Faith would have claimed to be innocently ferreting out information. Heh. As if she did anything innocently.

Willy was the best. He'd always try to serve her water, make her ask for beer again and again, make a point of asking for ID, etc. He knew she could pound him into the ground, but that had to be true of most of his customers; thing was, Faith was volatile enough to actually do it, and probably on a slight whim. Drink didn't mellow her out, either. One particularly late night she had slapped a Ngholhicq demon on the ass as she was walking out, not realizing that a) Ngolhicq demons were shapeshifters, and the apparently handsome man she had just touched was in its natural form a fanged, seven-foot-tall, vicious beast, and that b) Ngolhicq demons considered it a mortal insult to touch their hindquarters. That had been an interesting fight. Fights like that were the reason she came, she told herself. She liked serendipity, liked chaos.

This evening, however, was lacking as far as chaos went. Faith was buzzed, and that had taken quite a bit of time—Buffy had taken advantage of super slayer strength and agility, she thought, but that was nothing next to the super slayer alcohol tolerance—but there was nothing around of interest. A few vampires were in a booth not far from her, whispering crude comments about exactly whose neck they'd like to suck and for how long; a man in a farther away booth, presumably a demon not yet at ease in his earthly body, wore sunglasses, nursed a cup of tea, and tried to look at absolutely nothing.

"Willy," Faith said, managing with her tone to summon him over.

"Yes?"

"I've seen that guy before, with the sunglasses. Who is he?"

"You, you know I don't go talking about my customers. Can't you ask him yourself?"

"I could," she said. She sipped her beer. "I don't want to. What do you know about him?"

"I know he pays for his drinks. He doesn't make trouble. You wanna talk to him? Go talk to _him_."

Faith turned away and looked directly at the man. He didn't seem to even notice her.

She felt a tap on her shoulder and turned around quickly.

There was a tall man in front of her—dark brown hair, green eyes, thin lips. Lean, but clearly muscular. Nice frame, self-assured stance. Pale enough that she could be sure he was a vampire even without seeing his fangs.

"You're the slayer."

"Well, I'm one of the two."

"The important one. I won't ask what you're doing here. I'd like to offer you a proposition."

"A proposition? Listen, vamp, I'm not nearly buzzed enough to climb in bed with a dead guy." She sized him up again. "Unless you'd like to buy me a drink or two first?"

"A _business_ proposition. Or what passes as business here."

"Pity. Well, what's business, buddy?"

She liked the guy. He hadn't taken his eyes off her, not since he addressed her. Willy clattered a few glasses as he tidied up behind the counter; the vampire didn't even blink. She wondered how he'd move under her. Going by Buffy's example, vampires did make the best lovers.

"The details I can't tell you. Only that my employer thinks he can make you the biggest thing in Sunnydale and pay handsomely to boot."

"Ah. Well, I think I know just what kind of handsome pay I'd like." She smiled at him.

She was put off that he didn't smile back—or react, even. They walked out of the bar together. The man's stance had been solid, but now that he was in motion he seemed more stiff than strong. He didn't turn his head or look left, right, up, or down. As stiff as a robot. Was he a robot, perhaps? A robot vampire, taking her to some strange new employer?

She was intrigued.


	3. Chapter 3: Volumes

Willow had a stack of books in front of her, and by now she knew their titles very well: The classic _Malleus Malificarum_, a more recent two-volume set on _The Varieties of Apparitional Experience_, and a thick volume titled _Hallucination and Its Discontents_. She couldn't keep her eyes on the print, smeared and faded as it was; when it got to be too much she would sweep her eyes over the covers of the other books. On their spines the titles were worn so thin as to be nearly illegible.

"So what are you saying?" Buffy said to Giles. "That it was some sort of hallucination? That I imagined it all?"

"I'm saying nothing of the sort, Buffy. My point was merely that since the body disappeared, as did the blood stains, it might have been something other than what it seemed. An illusion of some sort. Quite horrifying, I'm sure—it would have seemed quite real."

They would just talk and talk about the same things. Willow closed here eyes as hard as she could for a second and made a squeal-like sound she hoped was too quiet to be heard. She didn't want to think about a little boy dying. She wasn't even reading the text now, but she swept her eyes over it line-by-line as if it might somehow slide into her unconscious. Xander was sitting near her, doing the same thing and occasionally looking over at her.

"No. It didn't just seem real—it was real. I felt his pulse, Giles. This wasn't some phantom."

"You have to realize, there are ghosts that are solid enough to touch, Buffy." Willow couldn't understand why he was still arguing. He had already concluded that Buffy had seen some illusion, and Buffy had already concluded the opposite; arguing didn't mean anything. "There might not have been any child, and there might not have been any blood."

"There was a child," Buffy said. "And there was blood—it was all over me. Giles, why are you being like this?"

He had flinched, Willow noticed, when Buffy said the word "blood." Now his glasses were off, in his hands—he was wiping them with his shirt.

"It's a matter of principle, Buffy. We have to be very careful, being in the business of magic, not to allow our emotions, our fears, to cloud the way we perceive things. Anything else is chaos. If you combine feelings and magic you have chaos."

Was he trying not to look at Buffy? He had a book in his hand now, and was flipping through it—some thin manual on the practices of the watchers, one Willow hadn't seen before.

"I have magic," Buffy said. "As the slayer. And I have feelings. What are you saying?"

He closed the book. "It's not about you personally, Buffy. It's only something I think is important to remember. You have a great deal of responsibility."

"If you say so," Buffy said, and turned away. Giles walked to his office, still carrying his book; Buffy began sharpening stakes. Willow saw that the stakes were already sharp.

Willow couldn't make much progress in her book. Now she would try to read the book carefully, absorbing each word, only to find that she couldn't remember a single thing she had read. She would skim the book quickly, trying to absorb only the main points, but even the main points began to elude her. There were too many spells that created vivid illusions. There was no way she could find the answer. Reading more books only made the problem more overwhelming. Too many possibilities.

Faith entered the library, letting the door swing free behind her.

"What's happening?" she said.

Willow glanced at a clock on the wall. Half past eleven. Likely as not Faith hadn't been awake a few hours ago—she had always been a night owl, and lately she was downright nocturnal. "To do my job better," she had once explained.

"Buffy was telling us about something she saw last night," Xander said.

"Oh?" Faith said.

Buffy recounted the previous night's event.

"That all?" Faith said. She glanced at the pile of books. "Just a dead kid? You guys see that kind of stuff all the time at the Hellmouth, right?"

"It was different," Buffy said. "It was a child, bleeding to death right in front of me. And I couldn't do anything."

"You're pretty shook up, Buff. Sure you're up to handling all this slayer stuff? If just one dead guy's enough to scare you, maybe you'd be better taking a break. Skipping town."

"That seems a bit out of line, Faith," Giles said, stepping out from his office. "Buffy's been a slayer for some time. It's only natural that some things unsettle her. I'm sure as she matures she'll become more used to these things." He glanced down at a table stacked with books. "Anyway, it was a strange phenomenon. Certainly we will investigate."

"'As she matures'? I'm standing right here, Giles. If getting 'mature' means not feeling…jarred by all of this, I don't want any of it."

"Cool down, sis," Faith said. "It's just…when you get so rattled by these things, you gotta step back. It's not healthy."

"I'll do fine."

Buffy had stopped sharpening her stakes when Faith stepped in, but now she was sharpening again, working until the stakes had edges as precise as pencil points. Willow was worried she would slip and cut herself as she worked.

"I'm just saying, think about it. Go crazy with all this stuff and you're no good to anyone."

"I'm fine."

Willow closed her book. She would go home. She couldn't stand to hear fighting.


	4. Chapter 4: Bryant

The hotel was clean enough for him: not the type of ritzy cleanness that places each bit of furniture in its own isolated position, flushing the dust out of hiding and into waiting vacuum cleaners, but working-class cleanness. Cleanness that comes from muscle, that people put their backs into. He glanced at things only briefly as he walked directly to the front desk.

"One room. Payment in cash, in advance, for tonight and tomorrow night."

He wouldn't be there the next night, but he needed somewhere to stay during the next day until nightfall. Somewhere with thick blinds to keep out sunlight.

The clerk was expressionless. "Name?"

"John."

"Last name?"

"Ah…Smith?"

"You don't have a reservation."

"You have room."

"Just one room?" She was manipulating her computer now, still unsmiling.

"Right."

She clicked her mouse, recited a room number and a price. He pulled the bills from his wallet.

"Elevator is over there." She gestured.

He took the room key, not even bothering to follow her pointed finger with his eyes. He glanced around the lobby for the second time. There was a bench near the hotel entrance; he took a seat there. For the next four hours he did not move, other than slight eye movement and the occasional blink. At 2 AM he rose from the bench.

A different clerk was at the desk now. The previous shift, he recalled, had ended at midnight. No one had entered or left the hotel for the last hour. He walked around the desk.

"What are you…"

He struck the clerk abruptly on the side of the head, and she crumpled. A brunette not far into her thirties—he couldn't imagine why they had put such a pretty girl on a shift where no one would see her. He slipped a razor from his shoe, made a cut on the inside of her elbow, and placed his lips over the flow.

He stopped after a short while, applying pressure to the cut. With his other hand he tore a strip of fabric from the girl's button-down shirt. It wasn't a flattering top; better that it be ruined. He bound the cut and moved the girl so that she leaned against the wall behind the desk, looking as if she had chosen to take a brief nap.

There was a pad of hotel stationery at the desk, a cheap pen beside it. He wrote:

"Dear Miss,

"Apologies for my actions. A woman as lovely as you doesn't deserved to be wounded as I wounded you, but I couldn't help myself. Call it a bloodlust. I did my best to control the bleeding, though, and I don't believe you lost a significant amount of blood.

"I left the key to my hotel room, which is beside this note. Consider this my checking out. I've also given you a tip which I hope you'll find generous. Consider it my amends."

He began writing a name at the bottom of the page, before stopping and crossing it out. He took his hotel key from his pocket, along with his wallet, and placed the note, the key, and one-hundred dollars of cash on the desk. He stepped in front of the computer, manipulated it for a few minutes, and left.

On leaving the hotel he allowed himself a more thorough look at the lobby. There were only two cameras that he could see: one behind the desk and another at the elevator. He picked up a few brochures from a table covered with them. Local natural attractions. "Visit Sunnydale Zoo!" said one, in bold type. He folded them, slid them into his pocket, and walked out of the hotel.

He walked to the side of the hotel farthest from the road, walked up to the wall, and began climbing. He fell once, almost at the third floor; on his second try he made it to the fourth floor. He bashed the nearest window, shattered it. He cut himself on the glass only slightly, and in a minute's time he was inside the hotel and far from the window.

He walked for a few minutes, his movements precise, and stopped in front of a rather secluded corner room. He took the handle, forced it quickly, and was within the room almost before its cracking sound finished resounding in the corridor. There was a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the dresser, and he moved it to the door. A switch by the door activated the ceiling fan, and he flipped it.

He stripped and folded his clothes on the bed neatly. The bathroom shower was cold, and he remained in it for nearly an hour. Afterwards he dried off quickly and sat still on the bed for another few hours. From another room came the sound of a couple making love—judging from the duration, a young, passionate couple. For a minute he turned his head to and fro slightly, as if trying to locate the sound's source.

The room's blinds were open, and as the sun began to rise he moved from the bed to the restroom, sitting without motion on the toilet seat. He sat there for the entire day, hardly moving, until the sun began to set. Seeing the room go dark, he walked to the window, broke it, and leapt out.


	5. Chapter 5: Break

"You haven't noticed things being a little…strange?" Buffy said. She dodged a clumsy blow from a short, stocky vampire in front of her.

"No more than they usually are," Faith said. She lunged forward and thrust a stake into a startled vampire; with her other hand she swung backwards towards another. "I mean, when is it not weird around here? The crazy stuff is all the fun."

"Granted," Buffy said. She surveyed the graveyard. Was that all of them? "It just seems more unsettling than it usually is. We still don't know what these apparitions are, and every time we go on patrol I'm worried I'll see one. I thought that little kid was creepy, but it's like…they're only getting worse. I could swear the last one looked just like my mother."

"Well, I haven't seen any of them," Faith said. She glanced around for a second before noticing a small vampire ducking behind a tombstone. Seeing it, she leaped forward and kicked it in the jaw. "Anyway, what's it matter, if they aren't real?"

"I guess it doesn't," Buffy said. She sat carefully on one of the tombstones, as if she were afraid it would crumple under her. Faith was toying with the vampire now, punching it purposelessly. "Would you just stake him?"

Faith obliged. "Can't I run off a little steam?"

"No, no, it's great to run off steam. But couldn't you go bowling or something?"

"Tried it. Too easy."

"I guess it would be. What I'm trying to say, Faith, is—behind you!"

Faith spun around and struck the vampire, propelling it completely off the ground. She had it staked before it even finished falling.

"There. Did that one nice and quick."

"What I'm saying is," Buffy continued, "it's not just the things I've been seeing. There's this feeling I get now, whenever I go out on patrol. It's like the vampires are waiting for something. Holding back."

"It's a bit unsatisfying, though, y'know? Killing an ugly without a fight. It's like when a guy—"

"Faith."

"Right. Sorry."

Faith was circling around, now, searching for any sign of more vampires.

"I think that was the last of them," Buffy said.

"Doesn't hurt to look. Anyway, if this is holding back, I don't know what trying would look like. Half-a-dozen vamps, all together, out in the open. Reckless." She took a seat on a tombstone near Buffy. "I like 'em."

"You like the vampires?"

"Well, maybe not the vamps themselves. I like their attitude."

"That's…a little better, I guess."

"Hey, I didn't say I'd date one of 'em. I guess you could, though."

"Angel has nothing to do with this."

"Sure, sure. Asked him what the vamps are up to? I'm sure he'd have some ideas."

"I haven't seen him lately. He's been…busy."

"Busy like the other vamps are busy?"

Buffy stood up. "I don't have to take this."

"Easy, Buff. I'm just teasing you. 'Course Angel wouldn't get involved with the other nasties. He's ensouled and all. Totally harmless."

Buffy began walking away.

"Wait, Buff," Faith said, and stood up to follow her. "We're in this together, aren't we? The two slayers? We need to stick together. I'm just worried about you."

"Worried about me? Why me, exactly? Why not worried about the vampires, or about any of the other…things…that pop up in Sunnydale on a day-to-day basis?"

"Because—well, because, you just said it. 'A day-to-day basis.' We worry about monsters all the time. I'm worried about you because we've only got one Buffy."

Buffy glanced at Faith. Faith's dark eyes were wide, her lips held together slightly. Concern. Not an expression Buffy was used to seeing on her.

"Okay. Point taken. So what is it that makes you so worried, Faith?"

"I'm worried that you're worried."

Buffy raised her eyebrows. "That's a little…circular."

"No, I mean it. You're losing your edge, sis. You're getting anxious about these little things that you should hardly be thinking about. You need a break."

"A break."

"Right. You need to get out of here."

"I don't think I'm quite that bad off, Faith." Buffy started walking. "Let's finish the patrol. We still have to check the morgue some time tonight."

"Don't you think it can wait, Buff? We need to have this talk."

"Okay, now you're scaring me. You, Faith, not wanting to look for a fight?"

"Well, I mean…I could check the spot later…it's just…I worry about you."

"And I appreciate that. Really, I do. But we have things to do."

They began walking, Buffy in front of Faith. And Faith had not been expecting Buffy to look back at her, Buffy assumed—but Buffy did look back, and saw that her expression had gone from concerned to angry. She was rolling her eyes, looking away from Buffy.

No vampires rose at the morgue, and Buffy agreed to go home and allow Faith to handle the rest of the patrol. Buffy slept well that night; for the first time in more than a week she had no nightmares that she could recall.


	6. Chapter 6: Domestic

For all her fear of nightmares and visions, Buffy still watched the sky for sunset every night. Time again to see Angel. Who had seemed detached, lately, and hadn't been at his place the last few times she had dropped in; but even a glance at him was plenty, and she looked in every direction as she patrolled hoping to run into him by chance. Would she see him tonight?

An empty house. Where had her mother gone that night? What gallery exhibit? Now she wanted to look around the house, and she couldn't tell herself why. To see if everything was still there? To delay her inevitable patrol? To exorcise whatever nightmare spirits flitted from the floorboards whenever she slept? She told herself there was something she was looking for, but she couldn't remember what it was.

A look around the house. Basement first. She wanted to feel as if she was exploring the house from the ground up: ascending, somehow. The washing machine was down there—should she feel some sort of symbolic cleansing? Giles had books on the ritual significance of nearly everything. Should she count the steps as she climbed out of the basement, analyze the number's significance? Her numerology was iffy. Now the kitchen—sink and dishwasher. She wanted to wash her hands. They looked red. When she blinked she saw a bloody neck.

Sit down. A couch in the living room? No. Right here, on the floor, back against the wall. Dizziness—inner ear disturbances? Giles would know, but he wasn't here. She had to patrol soon. She couldn't. Visualize the goal. Her, running, leaping, dusting vampires too confident of their abilities.

Here was a clear image—not an imagining, a remembering. Three vampires in an alleyway, all of them fast. Nothing she couldn't handle. She staked one of them: she could still feel the wooden spike in his heart, the pleasant feeling of it falling loose as his body turned to dust. And she became aware of sirens. Both vampires fled, but she caught one of them by the coat, slammed him against the brick wall, kept punching, punching, knuckles white. Jerking her fist back and striking again, beating a steady rhythm. When the police arrived she was still punching him, breathing deeply.

"Ma'am?" Idiot police officer. "Could you let him go for a second? We're here to investigate the disturbance…ma'am! If you don't stop that I'll have to charge you." Dropped the vamp. He ran away promptly, and the policeman couldn't even draw in time to shoot him. Nice one, Buff. Listen to the nice policeman.

Charged her with assault, and she vaguely wondered how he could do that without ID'ing the victim. Pretty sure he couldn't. And no memory of the trip to the station, booking, any of that—ink on her hands, an uncomfortable seat on a prison cell cot. She tried to remember more details, but it was as if there was nothing more to recall.

Her mother in the jail cell with her, now—and then her father. No, but this happened, didn't it? Hadn't she discussed it with Willow? A skip in the sequence. They were photographing her. She saw mugshots, the word "slayer" where her name should have been. This must have been a dream. But dreams were reality, weren't they?

She heard a vague sizzle. Someone had left the oven on. She had left the oven on. Leftover meatloaf, reheated. She couldn't eat it now. What had she eaten for dinner, then? She hadn't had anything. Or drank anything. Dehydration? That could cause dizziness, couldn't it?

Who got dehydrated in January? Ah, but who bled to death in January?

It was so cold. Wouldn't the blood freeze? Wouldn't something stop it? Wouldn't her hand stick to the blood, like a tongue to a frozen flagpole? It was so unbelievable. Of course it hadn't really happened. She had to close her eyes. She was leaning against the wall, not sitting. Her eyes opened, and she was on the ground.

Things seemed at least a little bit clearer to her now. Clearly she had just experienced some sort of vivid dream or vision; it was different from all the strange visions she had been seeing lately. After it she had passed out, waking up only when she hit the floor.

She walked to the living room, hand on the wall, and sat down on the couch. The TV was turned off, and she couldn't see the remote anywhere. She rested on the couch. She hadn't realized how relaxing it was to just sit down and think about nothing.

There was a newspaper on the table, and she wasn't sure why. Her mother must still subscribe to the newspaper, but she couldn't remember the last time she had seen her reading it. Maybe she pored over it when Buffy was away from home, guessing at which articles had some connection to the slayer and which were unrelated. She knew that Buffy didn't like to talk about it.

Buffy picked up the newspaper. Perhaps it would have some explanation of what was happening to her. Maybe it wasn't just happening to her. No—she scanned the headlines—there was nothing. Her high school was pushing for more funding for the next year. A bar was reopening. The mayor had been murdered, shot with a crossbow.

That gave her pause. A crossbow? Who used a crossbow? She did, of course, but no one else, and she hadn't killed the mayor. Not that she could remember, anyway. No, it must have been demons. They were getting far too daring. Not powerful, of course, and nothing she had trouble handling, but daring. Occasionally it was very jarring.

She went to the kitchen to get a drink of water and look for something to eat. She was ready to patrol, she felt. There was nothing out there that she couldn't handle; or if there was, it was nothing that couldn't just as easily be there in her house. There were no safe spaces.

Only she wanted to talk to Angel. She felt safe around him. Where had he been lately?


	7. Chapter 7: After Hours

He sat down, holding the bottle in one hand. Good that it was far after the school's closing time; hopefully there would be no janitors wandering the place. Funny, really. Shelf after shelf of books of dark magic, and not a one of them would get him in trouble if discovered (with the possible exception of the volumes on satyrs and succubae). A chest full of sharpened blades, and it was no concern. But if they found a bottle of gin in the place he wouldn't be school librarian a week longer. It was the loss of control, he thought. At a school, of all places, people oughtn't escape their inhibitions. At a school there should be no relaxing.

He put down the bottle and picked up and half-drained a glass. He stood up and walked over to the cage. The place was a new angle to view the library from; a different vantage point. Sitting on the ground was another new angle, feeling the linoleum under him.

He glanced at the clock and cursed. He had said he would meet Joyce for dinner, but that was half an hour ago. She would have given up and left by now. It would have been an awkward meal, anyway. They would want to talk about Buffy, but they wouldn't. What could she tell him? Buffy spent more time with him than with her, and she would hardly want to share her few private memories. And he tell her? Of the Watchers' politics? Of Buffy's strange hallucinations? There wasn't a single thing she needed to hear.

He got up, took the bottle, and poured another glass.

Might as well go home. But he didn't want to go home. The Watchers had been in his house at least twice in the past week—hadn't even had the decency to put things back in their places when they were done. Looking for personal journals, he supposed, as if he wouldn't have those under magical lock and key. Of course he couldn't keep them out of Sunnydale; it had been enough trouble keeping them from starting their sadistic rite on Buffy. The name Cruciamentum seemed too close to "crucifixion" for comfort; Giles suspected half the Watchers would rather have a martyr than a living hero anyway. Martyrs were easier to think about. They didn't argue back.

He downed his second cup, put the bottle up, and carefully walked out of the library with the glass in his hand. He walked down the hallway and into the restroom. In the restroom he rinsed out the glass and dried it with a paper towel. He returned to the library.

When he got there, Angel was standing waiting by a bookshelf and paging through a thin volume. Giles was always jarred to see Angel. Where other vampires seemed kinetic, uneasy—standing crouched with muscles tensed, moving abruptly, keeping at all times a hungry stare—Angel was slow and solid. He had mass. He was like a shape formed out of earth.

"Can I help you?"

"I'm not sure. Do you have time to talk?" He kept the book in his hands. He didn't even close it.

"Of course. Of course. Have a drink?"

Angel made a smile. Slow smile. "You keep bags of bloods in a school library?"

"Oh, of course not. I only meant…a little gin."

"Not much better."

"You keep to your own business," Giles said. And regretted it; he sounded like a defensive alcoholic. "It's only a small bit, to warm the blood. Anyway, what did you want to talk about?"

"Buffy. What else would I talk about?"

"Naturally. Things are going well between you two? She seems rather…attached."

"To be honest, Giles, if they were going well I wouldn't be meeting with you at all. I hope that doesn't offend you too deeply."

"No, I understand. Best to keep the old man out of things. What's your trouble?"

"Does she talk about me often?"

"What? No, not so much. She wants to keep things from me, of course. Doesn't want to offend my sensibilities, running around with the living dead." He removed his glasses. "No offense, of course."

"None taken. It's just as…." Angel finally closed the book and slid it back into the shelf. "I don't think it's healthy for her, to be honest."

"To be hiding things?"

"To be seeing me. She already lives two lives—you know that. She's a slayer, and she's a schoolgirl. Now she's with me, and that's another…life, if you can call it life." Angel looked around the library, at the cluttered tables and old lights. "And she's getting older so quickly."

"Really, Angel? High school graduates outside of your sweet spot? I suppose you'll have to find another young thing."

Silence, for half a minute. "You know that's not what I meant." He began to reach for the bookshelf where he had placed the book, and then stopped. "What I wanted to say was…she's passing through the best years of her life, right now. Stuck with me, and I'm too old to feel any of it with her. You think you're old because you don't watch the same movies they do? Because you don't listen to the same records? When I was her age there were no movies to go to or LPs to put on and hear."

"Actually, they have these things called CDs now."

"Yeah, I knew that."

Giles had taken a seat, by now, and Angel was standing near him.

"You're sure you don't want a drink?"

"Not a drop."

Giles stood up. "If you want the truth, Angel, you've said everything I was thinking about the matter. She thinks that she's in some grand, destined romance with you. We both know that can't happen."

"Easy, now."

"Yes. Right. Maybe it could have happened in another story. But certainly it can't happen here or now—that's what you were saying, wasn't it?"

"Right."

"But she's all caught up now. If you leave her—and you will, you have to, one time or another—you can't stay here. She couldn't bear it, and neither could you."

"Of course."

"Then you're proposing what? To tell her you can't be with her, pack your things, and leave suddenly, never to be seen again?"

"If you want to put it that way, yeah."

"If that's straight, then," Giles said, and forced a flat grin, "you have my blessing." He touched his glass, slid it along the desk. "Break her heart with impunity." As he said those last words he saw that Angel was already gone.

He put up his glass and locked his desk. The Council would pick the lock as soon as he left, but he couldn't help but put the obstacle in their way. Quiet defiance. He walked to the shelves, found a darkened corner, and sat down on the carpet.

Angel left him with one less thing to worry about, but he couldn't imagine why he had come in the first place. They weren't exactly chatty. For a second he wondered if the conversation had really happened: Buffy had been seeing things, and the same could be happening to him. But Angel hadn't frightened him. There had been no violence.

He didn't want to stand up and walk out of the library. He didn't want to get in his old car and drive home. He didn't want to see the dashboard and wonder if there was less dust on it now than there had been when he was last in it. But with effort he rose, and he did not rest again until he was home. In fact, even at home he didn't rest.


	8. Chapter 8: Why she was surprised

Because she remembered looking up at the sky with him earlier that night: there had been the moon, just starting its wane, and he had said: "That's the best thing I'll ever see in the sky. The moon just starting to wane."

And she: "The best thing?"

"Well, unless you learn to fly."

And because the band had played so well. "Stereolab," he had said they were called—light beats, bright guitar strums. It took something to still sound unearthly next to all the weirdness of the Hellmouth, but they pulled it off. Oz's arm was on her shoulder. They hadn't even looked at each other, spoken to each other; it was enough to be close.

Because it wasn't as if they had forgotten about any of it—forgotten about the Hellmouth, or forgotten about the vampires, or forgotten how tense things were. Oz had seen a couple near the corner of the Bronze, a pretty girl and a brutish man with cheap clothes. The man had put his mouth on her neck. Oz hadn't said a word, but he had pushed through the crowd and made it over to them. Put a hand on the man's shoulder, gripped it. Willow had followed. The man had spun around, decked him, put him on the floor. His face had been human; no fangs. Excessive PDA was no crime.

Because even after that it had been tranquil. Synthesizer hums, the crowd moving gently. Oz turning his head slightly as she looked at him, so that she couldn't see the bruise developing. He smiled. He had a smile that didn't seem to ask for anything. They had held hands under the table.

Because his skin had been soft—hardly any hair on it, and certainly no fur. He hadn't sweated, even after that: his hand had been cool, gently wrapped around hers. And with her other hand she had sipped her cold Sprite and felt as if it was a magic potion cooling and calming her.

And because normally it happened so quickly. This time she only felt the hair on his hand grow slightly thicker. She thought it was her imagination. Oz made a short grunt, the kind that a person might make before getting up from a couch. She glanced over. His eyes seemed brighter than usual, even slightly yellow—but it was too mild a difference. The band finished their song.

His hand felt…smaller. The skin was coarse. She glanced over at him, and this time he didn't return her glance. He was looking at his hand.

"Willow, I…"

"This has to be something else. Some kind of curse—or, or, it could be a hallucination! I've been reading about those. I mean, it has to be. It's not even a full moon. It's not even close."

She thought he was starting to say something, but his teeth began to protrude and he couldn't speak at all. When he transformed quickly it seemed so smooth—almost elegant. A brutal elegance, but elegance. This time it was like watching a car crash: limbs twisting out of shape, blurs of teeth and hair, clothes ripping, and all of this tumbling to the ground.

Because she had thought that he would go after her first. She recoiled once he finished transforming. She put her arms in front of her face. But he tore through the crowd, without direction or reason.


	9. Chapter 9: Rumours of Wars

Giles cleared the table off. His Led Zeppelin records could go back to the crate; he couldn't listen to them anymore. His books could go back to the shelves; it wasn't as if they were any use. He found a rag and began wiping dust off the surfaces. What place was there for a librarian who hated dust? But he didn't even like to think of it lately. He moved slowly, as if cleaning his house was some delicate ritual. His eyes followed his hand as it moved; he didn't look around.

All the room dusted, and no company. He began a second pass, just as slow. Perhaps below the dust there was another layer, a layer over everything he saw. That layer hid the apparitions' caster. It was as good a theory as any. An invisible film spread over the hardwood floor. An invisible film spread over the lenses of his glasses, over his own body, over his eyes. There was an invisible film over the five empty bottles in the recycle bin. Nothing touched him through the film.

He walked to the front door, pointed a finger at his eyes, and smiled. "I can see you," was the meaning. Who watches the Watchers? Answer: the other Watchers. As strangling and comforting as always, like a mother who searches through your things when you're gone and tries but fails to put the room back the way it was. How had it made him so angry at one time? No, who was he kidding; he would be brooding over it again in a few days. One slayer, one Watcher, and beyond that an endless bureaucracy.

Putting it in perspective, though, there wasn't much they could do. What they had in numbers they made up for in sheer incompetence, and they didn't do much beyond basic surveillance. They watched him, they watched Buffy, and he was convinced they could hardly even keep track of Faith. The last time they had spoken to him they had nothing but wild accusations—that Faith was entangled in the demonic underworld, that she was doing some vampire's bidding, that it was all some vast conspiracy. It would have been somewhat more frightening if they hadn't been saying the same thing about Buffy for months.

Not that the theory was completely out there. He took a notebook from his bookshelf and flipped through it. There were serial killers on sprees in half-a-dozen major cities—they couldn't all be human. Barely a week ago it had rained blood in Cleveland. There were werewolves lose in Salt Lake City, and apparently the already-present vampires weren't taking kindly to them. There were reports of a giant girl in Canada. All these stories and a thousand others. Conspiracy was afoot, somewhere

The doorbell rang, and he let Buffy and Faith in.

"Come in, and take a seat. There's a lot we need to discuss."

"Nice pad," Faith said. "Why've we been meeting at that library at all, when you've got a place like this?"

"Thank-you," Giles said, "but I'd much prefer the library. I like to keep my space."

"Oh, I can tell," Faith said.

"Right. It's just that Principal Snyder's been…rather inquisitive lately. He's been visiting the library, delivering his homilies on proper discipline. It's quite disconcerting."

"I know what you mean," Faith said. "Screw discipline!"

"Not quite my point," Giles said.

"What was it you wanted to say, Giles?" Buffy said. "Any news about the visions?"

Giles looked away. "Nothing on that front, unfortunately. Willow and I haven't found a trace. Magic is limited; we can only do so much. Whoever is casting these illusion spells—if that's what they are—is doing it carefully. There are no traces, no patterns."

"Could be in her head," Faith said. "No one else's seen the stuff. I haven't."

"You saw those vampires last night, though, didn't you?"

"The ones you saw…what was it…fighting each other? Not a single one, Buff. You saw them, you told me about them. I just watched you watch 'em. Sounded like a cool vision, really. Vamps tearin' themselves up."

"That does sound…relatively pleasant," Giles said. "In a twisted way. But never mind that. My point is—you can't both stay here."

Faith and Buffy both looked at him for a second before turning and looking at each other. Faith grinned.

"I mean, she ain't that bad, Giles. I can make my peace."

"Right. I mean, me and Faith have had our differences, but they're not…we can…the point is, we're the slayers. We've got to work together; it's who we are."

"I'm glad to hear these sentiments," Giles said, "but they're beside the point. It's not that you can't get along; it's that we can't keep both of you here in one place when there's so much to be done around the world. Just the other day in Los Angeles, for example, there was—"

"L.A.?" Faith said. "Well geez, of course there's gonna be bad stuff goin' on. It's L.A.! Place where nightmares get bottled and dreams get sold."

"Bad experience?" Buffy said.

"Common sense," Faith said.

"That notwithstanding, there are a dozen, a hundred, other stories I could tell you. Do you know there was a rain of blood just the other week in Cleveland? These are apocalyptic portends. We can't just let them be because they're out of our limited range. One of you can stay here, certainly, but not both. And Faith, since you—unlike Buffy—have no ties of family or education holding you here, I would suggest that you take to the road."

"Now wait a minute," Faith said. She stood up. "I just got off the road. I've barely been here, you're already shoveling me off? Trying to get me to wander around…wherever, just so you don't have to deal with watching two slayers at the same time?"

"Faith, you know that that's not—"

At that moment the phone rang, and Giles left the room to take the call. Better to give them a moment to think about the matter, anyway. Faith's reaction had been more visceral than he had expected. He picked up the phone.

"Giles, this is Xander."

"Hello, Xander. Listen, could you give me a call later? This is a rather important—"

"Look, all undue respect and such, but there's a freaking werewolf in the Bronze, right now. Might be Oz, might be someone else, I dunno—"

"A werewolf? Xander, it's not even a full moon."

"That's what I said. Look, it could be anything. It could be Oz. Point is, we need Buffy here yesterday. Erh, an hour ago. Erh, right now. Ah, you know what I mean. Send her over."

"Right."

He hung up and walked back to the living room. Buffy and Faith were both stone silent, and he wasn't sure whether that was a good or a bad sign.

"Get up and prepare yourselves—there's a werewolf, at the Bronze."

"Maybe Buffster should handle this one alone, huh, Giles? Since she'll be doing so fine with me wandering round the States by my lonesome? Get some practice."

"Don't be petty, Faith. This could be important. Either this is an actual werewolf—which would indicate very powerful magic—or this is one of the phantasms Buffy has been encountering, finally manifest to a larger group of people. To the entire Bronze, as it were."

"And you don't think Buffy's up to it."

"Don't pretend this is about me," Buffy said. "You'd think I wasn't here. You want to stay because _you_ want to stay, end of story. It's not about me, I know that as well as you do."

"Y'know, I resent—"

"We don't have time for this. That could be Oz."

Buffy walked out the door, Faith behind her, arguing as they went. That could have gone better, Giles thought. No, it couldn't have: this way he didn't even have to discuss things with them. They had the ideas, the conversation was over, and by the time he talked to them again they'd have gotten used to the idea.

He couldn't listen to records; they bored him. He couldn't read the news; it worried him. He would play guitar, but by now he knew that it would be no comfort; he wouldn't be able to focus. If there was anyone in Britain he could still talk to he would pay the long-distance charge in a second, but there wasn't. He wished an old friend of his—any old friend—was nearby. Someone to drink with and reminisce with. But there was no one.


End file.
